There's more to managing weight than just eating less

By Jessica Oswald / Special to the Times-News

Wednesday

Oct 24, 2012 at 12:01 AM

Losing and maintaining weight is all about balance — calorie balance. To maintain your weight, you want the amount of calories that you take in through food and drink to equal the amount of calories that you burn through activity. To lose weight, you want the amount of calories that you take in through food and water to be less than the amount of calories that you burn through activity. This is called a negative calorie balance. Achieving a negative calorie balance is hard. It’s especially hard when take into account the fact that studies have shown that we are eating anywhere from 300 to 700 more calories per day than we were 20 or 30 years ago and that we are less physically active than we used to be. When you ask how to achieve this negative calorie balance, you’ll receive multiple answers. These answers can be anything from miracle pills that promise to grant you negative calorie balance with very little effort on your part (these rarely work and are unlikely to be safe) to watching what you eat and exercising. Watching what you eat and exercise is the best way to lose and/or maintain weight; however, with the watching what you eat part of the message, many are told to eat less. The eat-less message appeared out of a need to help people figure out how to decrease their calories. Eating less works very well for many people and it is an effective way to lose weight. But, eating less is a bit of an outdated message because it is completely possible to have a full plate of food while still keeping your calories in check. Instead of eating less, eat smarter. Eating smarter is all about lowering the energy density of your foods while upping the nutrient density of foods at the same time. Energy-dense foods are foods that are high in calories by weight. That McDonald’s hamburger is very energy-dense. Nutrient-dense foods are foods that are high in nutrients by weight. Fruits and veggies are nutrient-dense foods. There are many small things that you can do to lower the calories that you are eating while still keeping your plate full so that you feel full. • Fill up at least half of your plate with fruits and/or vegetables. • Have a fruit or vegetable with each meal and snack. • Incorporate fruits/vegetable purees wherever you can. You can use them in muffins, quick breads, pancakes, waffles, smoothies, casseroles, mashed potatoes, risotto, sauces, and more. In taste testings, many people preferred the baked good with a fruit/veggies puree in it because it was more moist. • Use chopped and sliced vegetables to enhance dishes. You could try adding cauliflower to macaroni and cheese, mushrooms to lasagna, tomatoes and sweet pepper to sloppy Joes, and thinly sliced zucchini to spaghetti. • Just add fruits and vegetables. Add spinach to pasta sauces. Add in lots of veggies to sandwiches, soups, chili, pastas, and stir-fries. Here’s a recipe to try:

Jessica Oswald is a family and consumer sciences agent and dietitian with the Alamance County branch of the N.C. Cooperative Extension Service. Contact her at jessica_oswald@ncsu.edu or (336) 570-6740.

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